The IRS erased backup takes with Lois G. Lerner’s emails even after the messages were subject to a congressional subpoena, but it was an “unbelievable” chain of coincidences rather than a malicious intent to subvert Congress, the tax agency’s inspector general said Thursday.

As many as 24,000 emails may have been permanently lost, but the inspector general has managed to recover about 1,000 messages from the tapes because the IRS only “degaussed” the tapes but didn’t destroy them.

Still, the move to erase the tapes after they had been requested by Congress didn’t sit well with Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz, who accused IRS chief John Koskinen of obstructing Congress‘ investigation into the emails and tea party targeting.

He wondered whether it was a “coincidence” the erasure came just a month after President Obama dismissed the tea party-targeting scandal as a nonissue.

Democrats said the erasures weren’t an intentional effort to hide the information from Congress or the inspector general, and the investigators who recovered the tapes agreed.

“There was nobody who did anything intentionally to hinder our investigation,” said Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the Oversight Committee.

The IRS, in an unsigned statement, admitted to “a clear breakdown” in its procedures that allowed the backup tapes to be erased, but took heart in the inspector general’s finding that it wasn’t intentional.

What would it take to ever convict the IRS of wrongdoing? From what I’m reading it seems like they can just make up any story and they are automatically beyond prosecution.

Once again we see that Federal workers are a law unto themselves. They have no accountability to Congress. They can do anything they want to support the President and no one will ever penalize them for breaking any law.